David Brooks: Conservative Movement Has "No Leaders," "No Coherent Belief System," In A "World Of Pain"

Conservative columnist David Brooks envisions very tough times ahead for conservatives. On "Face the Nation" this morning, Brooks says the conservative movement has "no leaders," is in a "world of pain," and lacks a "coherent belief system." Watch a clip from the show (via ThinkProgress).

Comments

[Twinkie]

They still got 46% of the popular vote folks. Don't forget that.

[KarateKid]

The margin will be higher in 2012. The conservative movement is crumbling, and the battle within the Republican party will be intense, between the Rush Limbaugh/James Dobson faction and the moderates. Personally, I hope the Limbaugh faction wins out with Palin. It will be a bloodbath.

[ddemos]

I still feel like it's still dangerous to underestimate them...har­d to believe they won't rise from the ashes w/ an even more ridiculous ideology.

[StillIRise]

I would wager that half of that vote was cast by people who don't think any more of the Republican Party or conservative movement than we do, but simply refused to vote for a black man. Consider the regions where McCain won.

[mandoboy]

uhhhhh...u­mmmmm...yu­h mean them there ster-e-o-thapps maght be trew?

Lacka edumickation?

[realpolitic]

Still, congratulations on the Obama victory. It was overwhelming in the electoral college. We are finding a new path.

[HurryUp1212009]

That's just an actuarial anomoly: Their "base" is 50% ignorant, older white people. Never fear, the Grim Reaper is a Democrat. Tee Hee.

[mandoboy]

the ssaallmmonnn mooooousss­e.....

[Exit]

Have conservatives had an original thought since Reagan? No!

[darker]

REAGAN?
He was a FAKE STOREFRONT for the FRAUD OF REAGANOMICS
which robbed working and middle class Americans while
ENRICHING THE REPUBLICAN
NANNY STATE FOR THE RICH
and their corporate welfare queens.

[Demetre]

These conservatives can't rebuild the party until they face the fact that their underlying principles are responsible for the disasters our nation now faces. That's all there is to it.

[mandoboy]

Haven't you heard? They are declaring it's all Obama's fault!

That's some power Barack's got, to have had such an effect before he gets the keys to the office!

Those neo-cons, such merry pranksters! They'll need that sparkling wit and humor to get them through the next 12 (at a minimum) years!

[watchingthings]

They have Sarah. Sarah tells them what they want to hear.

[smilodon1]

Good! May they soon become extinct.

[gi]

Aaaannnndddd how! WOooohh I agree.

[kotexbarbie]

Reagan was as dumb as Sarah Palin. Maybe dumber!. Remember "Trees cause air pollution.­" I just want to add that he and Nancy had really smart, wonderful kids (democrats­).Patti and Ron Jr.

[Paralogos]

Yes, but Reagan had an appreciation of the importance of at least an appearance basic decency that Palin clearly does not.

[kotexbarbie]

True ,Reagan was really good at sticking the knife deep into the American people and twisting it with a gosh golly smile on his face!

[NWBrunette]

The repubs haven't had a coherent belief system for decades. They've run on no-women-abortin', no-gays-a-marryin' with a large dash of racism and heeps of greed. None of those things has much interest for most of the electorate. But they'll be busy concocting some other batch of scheming nonsense.

[4fathers]

if the repubs want to become relevant again they will heed david brooks' advice. he makes his case in his last column for NYT.

[chronic]

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.



----Benjamin Disraeli

[DarthVector]

From Hayek's Constitution of Liberty, the postscript: Why I am not a Conservative.

" As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change... the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind...

" The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change 'orderly.'­...

" In the last resort, the conservative position rests on the belief that in any society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited standards and values and position ought to be protected and who should have a greater influence on public affairs than others...

" ...conserv­atism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself... in the struggle of ideas.

" Connected with the conservative distrust of the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism.

" Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developmen­ts."

http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46

[StillIRise]

WOW!

[donoevil]

Is this the same Hayek who wrote "Road to Serfdom"? If it is that seems to be the source of the right wing's talking points which always confused me. I wondered where they came up with their slogans (social engineering et al), until I saw them in this book. When I leafed through it I also realized that they learned a lot from Hitler. Like how to use propaganda, build a war machine, build an economy based on that war machine, on and on.

[KickerBoard]

On the contrary, conservatism is exactly where it ought to be. FDR saved the USA with Keynesian economics - it's only thanks to the Reagan disinvestment in public education that the important memory of that has been whittled away in favor of never proven GOP-driven "trickle-down", unregulated free-market nonsense.

[joebiz]

Apart from not having a deeper philosophical message and taking on the issues of the day, the GOP has failed to foment and create a steady base of leaders.

One has essentially the precusor stage of the Party: Einsenhower and Goldwater; the middle stage: Nixon and Reagan; and the tail end: Bush I and II and McCain. The first two stages are gone and what is left? No replication of viable leadership but a void filled by what is considered an almost obscene wing of the GOP: The Christian fundamentalist movement.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the meta-issues were: Rise of China, Russia, and EU; terrorism and Islamic jihad; globalization and its management. No great boogey-man to contend. Thus, no raison d'etre for th GOP. The End of History.

[JohnKevari]

KEVARI SNOWFLAKES

Can we be honest and blunt here?

The Conservative movement became popular in the 1960's because by then it became unfashionable to hold rallies where men and women show up in white robes and white masks.

You see where I'm going with this?

The conservative movement grew in the 70's and 80's because a lot of people were scared out of their minds. They were afraid because the world that they knew was changing. It was changing and they wanted to hold on to the past that they cherished.

Wasn't that the appeal of Ronald Reagan? Wasn't that the appeal of Sarah Palin and her "simple, American values?"

So now the conservative movement is dying. People are saying the era of Reagan and Bush are over.

What should be our response?

BUH-BYE!

[stefiz]

i wish it was dying ... have you ever been to a mid western church (any denomination)?? i went to a haunted house this year put on by a church where they told us a vote for Obama would send you to hell!! the pastor was doing an anti abortion ?skit? and was waving a bloody baby doll at 10 year old kids!!

[ChessLover4Obama]

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." -Harold Wilson

[212RLamas]

david brooks is exactly what i think has happened to the party...
he and the other intellectuals of the right have left the party...
what you have left over is the ignorant palin part...
look for a new party to emerge with either a palin or a jindal leading the new religious right...
and for a crist or a pawenty leading a separate progressive right...

[solrac2002]

i agree

[NWBrunette]

I agree except for the "progressive". The right is not progressive. The correct phrase to use of "not quite so extremist".

[majorteddy]

exactly!!! and wait until the actuarial tables bite the republicans in the butt the next time around. $.5 million people over the age of 55 will die each year over the next 4 years for a total of 18 million voters. John McCain won this group by a 60-40 margin. Guess who's replacing them? 14-18 year olds. Guess who they voted for by a 2-1 margin. A net swing of 9.6 million voters.Ouc­h!!!!!

[Querent]

David Brooks looks so urbane on TV, except for the combover. But he is not and never was an intellectual. He believes in phantoms: the Invisible Hand of the the Market, the Conscience of a Conservative. Things which never existed. A real intellectual would have noticed that Conservative "philosophy" has no foundation other than ad hoc constructs such as the idea that small government is the ideal, and that the government should only do things which benefit the propertied classes.

Mr Brooks' sudden discovery that conservatism has no basis must be giving him vertigo. What it really means is that he has no idea how to go forward from here.

[flotsam]

David, you got this all wrong - you guys are doing great. Just stay the course. You didn't win because you weren't conservative enough. Evolution is too high-minded to renounce - how about mathematics or gravity?! That will attract the independents. And move the GOP headquarters to a cave - just like Jesus would want.

No, you guys are doing fine. I would just put all my eggs in the Sarah Palin basket and ride that shooting star to 2012 and beyond.

[andhakari]

... or is this jetsam? Really, I don't know what your point is.

[MasterfullyInept]

The point is that if the Republicans cling to their religious fundamentalist base, and continue to champion social conservatism they will be irrelevant­.They Have ridiculed science and knowledge for so long the conservative intellectuals have been banished from the party.Go read the threads at Free Republic all that's left is dittoheads and deadender know nothings.T­hey are ready to follow Saint Sarah into the bowels of Hell.This is good news for Progressives, it will insure another Democratic victory in future elections.­Palin has the ambition but most Americans see her as a fear monger bent on dividing the country, at a time when we need to hang together desperatel­y.She is in fact a loser.So the more prominent she is in the Republican party the better it is for Progressives and the country.

[Querent]

Thick.

[situationcritical]

I'm with you flotsam. Conservatives should just stay the course...a­nother George W. Bush will greet you wearing a brand new Gucci Flightsuit and a pair of Manolo Blahniks.